Tabbed Document Interface

  • Thread starter Thread starter CMM
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CMM

Frankly, I'm stupified that MS hasn't built this in as a control considering
MDI has been oficially deprecated for 10 years. I know there are 3rd party
options. Some of them are quite good!.... but, 1) they're expensive, and/or
2) they tie you to a proprietary framework and require you to do things like
inherit your forms from a base class bla bla bla. And, the Composite
Application UI Block from MS is no better.

Soooo, I wrote one myself. I started it like two years ago in VS2003, have
used in big applications I've written at my company, and finally have gotten
it into a state where I think others could use it easily and benefit from
it.

The goal was to make it completely transparent to the child windows....
you're still creating an MDI app (and can switch to classic MDI on a whim if
you want) but from the user's point of view it's a complete Visual
Studio2003/2005//FrontPage2003/Mozilla FireFox- like Tabbed Window
application.

So enjoy... http://www.cflashsoft.com/progs/mdiwinman/
Yes, it's free and the source code is there too.
 
CMM said:
Frankly, I'm stupified that MS hasn't built this in as a control
considering
MDI has been oficially deprecated for 10 years.
Click to expand...

I think MDI is only inofficially deprecated...
 
From the current Windows User Experiment Guidelines:
Note MDI is an application-oriented model. Many new and intermediate users
find it difficult to learn to use MDI applications. Therefore, many
applications are switching to a document-oriented model. Therefore, you may
want to consider other models for your user interface...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...rface/windowing/multipledocumentinterface.asp

If I remember correctly the wording was even harsher back in 1995 when Win95
came out and Microsoft was trying to encourage certain new designs (for
instance, the Document Oriented Shell vs the classic Application Oriented
(Program Manager) Shell... which BTW they have also abandoned 100% in Office
2003). I think when they found that they couldn't- for technical reasons-
convert their own apps- like Excel which fakes SDI in a really bad and
disconcerting way unlike Word which gets it right- they have backpadeled.
But back in '95-98 there was no mistaking it; MDI was dead. Nowadays, it's
like the zombie that refuses to die. :-)
 
I meant Windows User *Experience* Guidelines.:-)

--
-C. Moya
www.cmoya.com
CMM said:
From the current Windows User Experiment Guidelines:
Note MDI is an application-oriented model. Many new and intermediate
users find it difficult to learn to use MDI applications. Therefore, many
applications are switching to a document-oriented model. Therefore, you
may want to consider other models for your user interface...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...rface/windowing/multipledocumentinterface.asp

If I remember correctly the wording was even harsher back in 1995 when
Win95 came out and Microsoft was trying to encourage certain new designs
(for instance, the Document Oriented Shell vs the classic Application
Oriented (Program Manager) Shell... which BTW they have also abandoned
100% in Office 2003). I think when they found that they couldn't- for
technical reasons- convert their own apps- like Excel which fakes SDI in a
really bad and disconcerting way unlike Word which gets it right- they
have backpadeled. But back in '95-98 there was no mistaking it; MDI was
dead. Nowadays, it's like the zombie that refuses to die. :-)
Click to expand...
 
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